


Sea Foam

by Juliet_Capri



Series: Home Sweet Home [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, One-Sided Attraction, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-16
Updated: 2016-07-16
Packaged: 2018-07-24 07:52:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7500135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Juliet_Capri/pseuds/Juliet_Capri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>  Bucky Barnes was born in 1919 to the most beautiful women to ever live. After the fall, he doesn’t remember much of her, just flashes of silky hair and the smell of tulips, but he knows she was beautiful. He knows it to be true in the same way he knows the sky is blue or that tomorrow morning the sun’s gonna warm his face in that way that brings freckles to his cheeks. She was strong, loving and above all she loved Bucky unconditionally.<br/>         He wished he had her unconditional love the day he first saw Steve.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sea Foam

**Author's Note:**

> I have no bata, I'm sorry. :/

         Bucky Barnes was born in 1919 to the most beautiful women to ever live. After the fall, he doesn’t remember much of her, just flashes of silky hair and the smell of tulips, but he knows she was beautiful. He knows it to be true in the same way he knows the sky is blue or that tomorrow morning the sun’s gonna warm his face in that way that brings freckles to his cheeks. Bucky remembers so little of the first time he realized that fact that he doubts he was even old enough to know what beautiful really was when he first saw his mother, but he doesn’t doubt that it was true. His mother was beautiful. She was strong, loving and above all she loved Bucky unconditionally.  
         He wished he had her unconditional love the day he first saw Steve. Steve was amazing. He was nice, calm, artistic and beautiful. Bucky knew, as much as a 6 year old can know, that Steve was beautiful in a different way from how his mom was beautiful. His mom was warm, soft and home. Steve was hot, sharp, and truth. Two different things, but they were equally as beautiful to Bucky. The feelings he had for Steve changed as they got older, as to be expected, but unexpectedly Bucky felt more sure of his feelings about Steve instead of growing out of them like the nun at Catholic school had told an 8 year old him when he told her he wanted to marry Steve.  
         “You’ll feel differently in the future,” she said patiently. Bucky was an excentric child and the nuns had learned quickly that Bucky would never settle on one idea for long enough for it to become a problem.  
         “No I won’t! Steve is perfect!” he reasoned excitedly.  
         “What makes him so perfect?” she replied, a smile Bucky found very condescending on her face.  
         “He’s blond, and funny, and nice, and has blue eyes, and knows how to draw a whole lot better than I can, and knows the first 10 pages of Frankenstein. He’s perfect!”  
         “Sounds like it, but Bucky,” she had a soft tone to her voice and Bucky knew he was not going to like her next words, “don’t you think a girl will also be blond, have blue eyes, and like Frankenstein? Maybe a girl who might be better suited to marry a boy like you?”  
         Bucky looked at the ground and mumbled “I guess.”  
         “Good, don’t plan your wedding too soon, Bucky. You may want to wait till that girl shows up.”  
         He waited, but the girl she talked about never came and Steve was still there 5 years later. He remembered how he had thought about kissing Steve that year. Steve was 13 and had not had gained any height since the boys were 10. Steve was less than 5’ and scrawny as all hell. He wore too many layers to ever really tell, but Bucky knew the blond was all bones. Bucky could never explain it, but he loved how small Steve was. He just wished the little jerk would be more careful sometimes.  
          It was a damn nuisance trying to protect Steve and the blond never could stop himself from intervening on other people’s problems. This met Bucky had to get involved and save Steve from getting himself killed. Bucky didn’t mind that though, Steve made up for it by always being there. Bucky wasn’t the most social, usually choosing the peace and quiet of his room – and eventually the apartment he shared with Steve – to the noise of the parties and clubs people like him normally went to. Steve either didn’t care or didn’t notice that Bucky wasn’t like everyone else; he just sat at a table and drew, never talking but comforting Bucky with his silence.  
          Bucky occasionally did go out. Most of those times were either for show, when the neighbors got a little too invested in Bucky and Steve, or when he couldn’t get out of some date a girl would boldly proposition him. Steve didn’t say anything about that either. He’d just sit at the table or sit on the one beds in the apartment and draw like it was any other night.  
          Bucky didn’t know if Steve suspected or if Steve just thought Bucky was as much of a “Bad Boy” as the diner girls did, but Steve and Bucky never talked about women or families or a life outside of their little apartment that was too scummy and rotted to be warranted being called a home. He was glad to not have to lie to Steve. He wasn’t even sure if he could. To most of the world, Bucky could spew a bunch of manure about how he was just getting out his wild side but would make an honest woman out of some “lucky” lady soon. To Steve though, Bucky worried that he’d spill the truth, that there wasn’t anything “wild” about what he did with the women he took to the clubs and parties, that Bucky couldn’t see himself changing anytime soon, and that the closest thing to an honest woman he wanted waiting for him at home was Steve and his sketch book.  
           “Bucky?” Steve began one night. Bucky had been waiting for Steve to say something all evening; the nights adventures were more than a little weird, even for Bucky.  
When the pair had been walking up to their place, Amy Stratton had not so subtly tried to entice Bucky into asking her to accompany him to the next party that Bucky didn’t even realize was happening. Bucky had pretended not to get it and said that he wasn’t gonna go to the party because of a “family thing.” Amy’s family had moved to Brooklyn when Bucky and Steve were already on their own and so she didn’t know about Bucky’s status as an orphan, save for Steve. Steve hadn’t said anything, but had given him an odd look once they got to the apartment.  
            “Yes, Steve?”  
            “Do you think David from the diner has blue or green eyes?”  
            Bucky spluttered a little bit before replying, “I’m not sure, why?”  
            Steve shrugged, “I’m just wondering. My sketch has him as blue, but now I’m thinking he might be green.” The smaller man didn’t look up at Bucky, which Bucky was forever grateful for. He just knew his face was that blotchy shade of red that reviled his inner thoughts.  
             David was the young kitchen hand at the diner. He was tall, dark haired and built. All the girls loved him even though he was never seen with anyone, just like Bucky. Bucky felt connected to him and had started meting the man at the docks every night for a month prior to the current evenings conversations. He liked to think of David as Bucky’s way of staying honest when it comes to his wild side. By this point in Bucky’s life, he knew David’s eyes as well as he knew the man’s rough hands and soft smiles, maybe as well as even his own even rougher skin and tight smirks. David’s eyes were blue green. Something that Bucky was sure the beauty companies would call “sea foam” or something just as meaningless.  
             Bucky didn’t say that though, he tried to play it off like he didn’t really know or care by saying “I guess they’re a blue green, but what does it matter, Stevie? All you sketches are black and white anyway.”  
            Steve huffed and blushed some flacks of dust off the pad in front of him, “They create different levels of shading you jerk. I want to get this right.”  
            “You trying to impress David? Hey, if you make him look good maybe he’ll take you as his date to the thing down the block.”  
            “No, Buck, it’s for his ma. He enlisted a while back and with everything that has been going on he knows he’s gonna be shipping out soon. He wants something for her to remember him by. The Army photos weren’t gonna do, so he wanted me to sketch him as he is at the dinner so she’ll see him there and not in Germany or Japan or where ever we’re going next.”  
            Steve’s voice had a bitter edge to it, but Bucky chose not to comment on it. He already knew Steve’s opinion on the war; Steve thought all wars were just bulling where the only one who loses is the real, living breathing humans stuck digging for their lives in the trenches. He never looked down on that anyone who joined the service, though; quite the contrary actually. Bucky knew that Steve would do anything for a man going into the service because Steve believed that a man going to service was giving up his life so that other people, people like Steve, could live. Some days Bucky thought he saw envy in Steve’s eyes when a man would leave to war, but he knew Steve never forgot about how selfless the action of enlisting actually was.  
            The rest of that night passed uneventful, but the next morning Bucky and Steve woke up to frantic pounding on the door. Steve crocked out a raspy “I’ll get it,” but Bucky shushed him and got up. Steve’s allergies were always worse in the mornings and Bucky tried to let Steve ease himself into the day to let him cut off too horrible of an allergy attack.  
            At the door was a frantic looking Ms. Goodal; her hair was pulled back neatly and her dress and shoes were exceptionably clean, but her eyes had a desperate look in them and she was gripping a yellow envelope like the world depended on it. “Ms. Goodal?” Bucky asked slowly.  
           “Oh, no, oh, heavens no,” she said before pushing the envelope to Bucky. He took it and saw his name scrawled on and a return address to a government building Bucky had never been to. He opened it; the letter’s seal was already broken, most likely by Ms. Goodal.  
           Bucky opened the letter and read the tight, neat print. He was being drafted. The fuckers thought that he, James “Fuck Dying for Others” Barnes was a good candidate for the military. His birth certificate should read “NOT FIT TO BE A PATRIOTIC LACKY” for clarification, but half the neighborhood could testify as witnesses to Bucky’s less then patriotic ramblings about the government. He was the only guy in the neighborhood to do so, but Bucky was a part of the anti-war movement in New York. Now, he was gonna be just another boy fighting in a man’s pissing fight. He was gonna die and Steve will be alone again.


End file.
